Monologues, Scenes, Reviews, Commentaries, One-Act and Full-Length Plays, Interviews, and Events from the World of Theatre

(Tamara Best’s article appeared in The New York Times, 3/11; via Pam Green.)

“You start to question your own mortality in a way because all you can hear is your heartbeat,” says Alex Brightman, the star of “School of Rock,” referring to what he calls his “crazy bath.” It requires him to almost completely submerge himself in a tub with the “hottest possible water you can stand,” an entire bag of Epsom salts and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide up to his ears. “You have to stay in for 10 minutes, but it feels like 30,” Mr. Brightman says. As Dewey, a rambunctious teacher who turns a classroom of sheepish kids into budding rockers, Mr. Brightman estimates he’s offstage for only eight minutes in a show that runs more than two and a half hours. “I’m singing at the top of my range all night long,’’ he says. “And when I’m not singing, I’m talking or screaming with extreme energy.” The demands have led him recently to scale back to six shows a week for his vocal health — and to take those baths — a technique, picked up from other actors, for releasing toxins from the body.